Unique occasion lives forever in deepest memory
They sat around the perimeter of the pontoon boat and fished from lawn chairs, laughing at old stories, at old memories and at themselves.
One had gotten soaked on a trotline run and was without spare dry clothes, they recalled. One had tried to make cornbread and only welded the batter to the pan. Another had once brought along three trolling motors but no battery. In their experience all had been variously misdirected, cold, hungry, lost. Most had been chased by dogs or treed by mean cows. They had missed game and lost fish and forgotten maps.
They were the best outdoorsmen I knew or have ever known. They were my Old Men.
It’s a rare situation that brings a full spectrum of friends and mentors together, and even moreso for that occasion to be a happy one, but memory of a single such event calls to me every summer when the days get long and the dandelions grow. One of the Old Men had accepted a prototype pontoon boat as partial payment for a metalworking job. He’d outfitted it with a motor and begun translating a lifetime of trotline experience to rod and reel, and found the results to his liking.
The action was there, for he knew how to catch fish. When he added several rod holders to the boat’s rail and devised a multi-hook rig, the numbers were there, too, and numbers were important. Productivity was critical for any activity that consumed resources. He could only justify the "sitting still" portion of fishing if we were catching fish several at a time.
Compared to a trotline boat the pontoon was long and broad, but its shallow draft let it work its way into almost anywhere the smaller boat could go. That meant all the best and familiar places were still available. Better yet, it had an open deck, good for stretching legs and straightening backs, even walking around a bit unimpeded. When he’d worked out enough tactics to make the strategy pay, he began taking his friends and my other mentors, some of whom hadn’t been out on the water in years. Gradually it dawned on someone that we should pull off a trip on which everyone could go, and so we did, which is how five old men and an overgrown boy found themselves on an open flat in the profusion of slow currents that join to move water through Grenada Lake.
The boat was a prototype, and one element the model didn’t consider was an apparatus to drop and weigh the anchor. This was where I came in. No anchor had come with the boat, so one was built of scrap steel, with angled spikes encircling the base of a central, solid pole. It measured a good three feet end to end and, while it was not heavier than a small giraffe, it wasn’t lighter than one either. I spent the day giving it a tour of the water column, as we changed location many, many times. Between moves I handed out bait, hooks, sinkers, corks, cans of Coke, Vienna sausages, crackers, sandwiches and other sundries as need arose.
The day combined the chief parts of both indentured servitude and favorite childhood memories – an odd combination but still, there it was.
I operated one rod myself and fished until I’d put two into the ice chest, one to avoid being shut out and one more for good measure, then stowed my own gear and focused on being a good deck hand. I’ve always been glad I did.
Decades later I’d learn the Rotary Club motto: “Service above self. He profits most who serves best.” The words were new but the idea was familiar, one I’d met long ago on a day of anchors and sunshine in the company of my collection of Old Men.